


chasing us down the old highway

by kwritten



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3815974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caroline, Elena, and Bonnie start running and never stop. Road Trip-au</p><p>written for the April 2015 tamingthemuse prompt: Fugacious</p>
            </blockquote>





	chasing us down the old highway

Running is what you do when there’s no safe place left to put your head down. That’s what Bonnie always thought. Until she started running and didn’t stop even when there was no reason to look in the rearview mirror anymore. Maybe it was the two girls she was with, running was in their blood – in their veins as surely as if it were a disease – and she didn’t know how to stop without them on either side of her and so she kept going. Even if her limbs weren’t as strong and her heart felt like it was always going to be a shattered hunk of glass in her chest. 

They pretended like it was fun until she thought maybe they actually believed it. Elena’s sunglasses hiding a bruise on her right cheek until it didn’t. Caroline’s off-key singing covering up the sound of them crying and holding onto each other in the back seat. 

The first time Elena kissed Bonnie her ears were filled with the sound of Caroline’s voice, not exactly soothing and a bit more manic than the song may have called for. She figures that it wasn’t the first time Elena ever took a girl in her lap and kissed away her tears while Caroline looked on. It wasn’t like she never noticed that their dorm room only ever seemed to have one bed that was slept in. The other was a storage space for Caroline’s clothes and Elena’s notes and Damon’s shirts and Jeremy’s… She kissed back because there was nothing but flames behind them and running ahead of them. She kissed back, tears streaming down her cheeks and a sob caught in her throat and her best friend’s unchanging flesh beneath her fingertips.

Someday she’ll start to show her age, maybe. 

For now she hides it like a dirty secret. Something to push under the beds of the too-nice hotels that Caroline seduces her way into while Elena rolls her eyes and twines her fingers between theirs, pulling them along while claiming them or maybe just ushering them both into her own desperate desire for things to never change. 

Things change. 

Even if they don’t. 

 

She kissed Patricia in the seventh grade under a tree in her backyard. She was new to the neighborhood and Bonnie was fascinated with her soft, curling black hair. All she wanted to do was touch it, feel it beneath her fingertips. So she did. Got invited over to help with the science project on fruit flies. They didn’t get very much work done. She didn’t taste like anything or smell significant in any way. Her grandmother later explains in her strange, witchy way that _scent_ and _taste_ are important. 

She’s fourteen. She asks why. 

_Because if there’s nothing there than the heart isn’t in it._

She doesn’t like to think about what Jeremy tasted like. Memories now taste like ashes on her tongue which is how she knows they are real. Instead she focuses on Caroline’s honeysuckle shampoo and Elena’s Dr. Pepper chapstick. If she can smell it and she can taste it than it is real. 

 

Elena, she learns, kisses her for comfort. And she gives it. Even when her own heart is still scraping its sharp edges on her bones inside of her chest with every breath. Maybe Elena always kissed to get some kind of comfort. Images flash before her eyes of Damon’s smirk and Stefan’s desperate eyes. Maybe Elena needs comfort now and got it in different ways before. They’re best friends. And that still means something in their small, dead world. 

 

The first time Caroline kissed her they were covered in blood and ash and Bonnie lifted her closed, tired eyes up to the warmth of running water and felt soft fingertips glide against her shoulder blades. Caroline always uses her strength, she takes without asking. Bonnie figures that maybe she’s been asking, asking, asking the world for just a fraction of what she wants her whole life, so why not give her what she wants? Her sore muscles loosened under the hot water and she tugged on Caroline’s strength to wrap her legs around the vampire’s waist. Bonnie’s fingernails left scratches that faded by the next morning. Caroline’s mouth left small, red marks on her neck. They are just part of the collection – Bonnie’s skin carrying the stain of their sins long after the other two are fully healed. 

Just teenage girls again. 

 

Maybe that’s why they keep her – Elena’s soft fingers and Caroline’s sharp teeth. Maybe they need her to prove that they all were once just teenage girls. Human. Mortal. Changeable. 

Like her. 

 

They travel down every highway and back road in the South until Bonnie’s head is swimming. Elena drives them up to the Capital one night when they are asleep – Caroline’s head on Bonnie’s chest, curled up between her legs. They spend a week frolicking around and taking pictures at the monuments like they are just girls. Caroline seduces a Senator’s aid and Bonnie isn’t sure but it’s possible Elena started a war – or ended one. Depends on the mood she was in. 

After that, it becomes a game, chasing their dreams around the country. Grand Canyon, world’s biggest yarn ball, Niagra Falls, nationally recognized pie. They pretend like they aren’t watching the road behind them more closely than the one in front until it is true. Bonnie eats so much cotton candy and popcorn at the multiple amusement parks they visit she puts on ten pounds. Elena calls it her ‘freshman ten’ and Caroline swears it must have all went to her boobs. She lets them wrap their cool bodies around her warm one in bed, two legs over her waist and two noses nestled into her neck, drinking her in. 

She’d give them everything. 

She’ll run with them until she can’t. Until it’s clear that they are outgrowing her while she stays the same. She’ll only ever be human. And they’ll only ever have all the time in the world. 

 

Maybe the hell they left behind – or created or destroyed she isn’t sure anymore – will catch up with them and she’ll give it all up. Or they will and she’ll be left alone. 

Maybe they’ll go together, their hands in hers and their bright smiles the last thing they all see. 

For now, they have the road. 

 

And they’ll run and run until they remember that they are the ones being chased or until there’s nothing left in the world for them to run to except each other. (As if that wasn’t the truth all along.)


End file.
